Simone de Beauvoir Quotes on Freedom
Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) presents the most systematic existentialist ethics: human existence is condemned to freedom, but freedom is genuinely my freedom only insofar as I will the freedom of others as the condition of my own. The Second Sex (1949) extends the analysis to the situation of women, arguing that woman has been constituted as the inessential Other against the male absolute — and that the conditions for women's existential freedom require a political and material transformation of that situation, not merely an inner act of will. The Coming of Age and the late memoirs continue the analysis through the freedom of the aged and the politics of decolonization.
Quotes
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“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
On ne naît pas femme: on le devient. -
Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”
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Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself, on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life.”
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Attributed to Simone de Beauvoir:
“To will oneself free is also to will others free.”
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“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom .”
The Blood of Others [ Le sang des autres ] (1946)